NCJ Number
80231
Journal
Corrections Magazine Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Dated: (December 1981) Pages: inside front cover,45-48
Date Published
1981
Length
5 pages
Annotation
Written by an American who was incarcerated in a Mexican prison for almost 1 year, this article details life among Mexican inmates and suggests that U S. corrections planners adopt some of the practices long in use in Mexican prisons.
Abstract
Mexico's tougher drug laws appear to be responsible for the imprisonment of many of the author's fellow inmates in the prison of Tapachula, Chiapas. The eight guards at the prison work 12-hour shifts and earn $80 per month. With few exceptions, the prisons do not provide food, clothes, or any of the normally accepted 'benefits' found in American prisons. Instead, inmates' families supply them with food, clothing, and funds. Conjugal visiting has been a fixture of Mexican prisons since the first was built by the Spanish. In Tapachula, these 24-hour visitation occur twice weekly. In other prisons, such as La Mesa in Tijuana, prisoners' families can live inside continuously, leaving at will for errands within the community outside. This constant exchange between the prisoners and the community at large represents the single most important difference between the penal philosophies of the United States and Mexico. Also unlike U.S. practices, Mexican prisons function without programs and policy statements, operations memoranda or institutional disciplinary and classification committees. Order is maintained in the overcrowded prisons through a combination of custom, common sense, and the daily decisions of those in charge. Mexican prisoners are left to organize and conduct their own lives. No one is made to work, to wear uniforms, or to give up their personal possessions. Violence between inmates is usually limited to a few fistfights, homosexuality is no more prevalent inside than out, and a mutual feeling of cooperation exists between inmates and guards. Apathy, hostility, and alienation, so common among American prisoners, is absent in the Mexican inmate who is either improved by the prison experience or at least has been made no worse. Photographs are included.